The ever-long delayed 25 Year Environment Plan
for England was finally published last month (1). It was supposed to be a
Green Paper, a consultative document that would give a rare chance for any
individual citizen to have a view/rant irrespective of whether it had any
effect on the final plan (2,3). When a year ago, a consultative framework for
the Plan was considered imminent, I thought it unlikely that it would
enunciate a fundamental principle for the existence and protection of wild
nature. I urged back then that we owed it to the lives of the thousands of
dead birds and animals that suffer from routine persecution in agricultural
landscapes, to demand through the consultation that the fundamental principle
of the existence and protection of wild nature becomes a policy of natural
justice for that wild nature (2). It had not seen the light of day by May last
year, but I urged again that we should all reclaim our wild heritage by
ensuring that the political will hears our public will for wild nature (3).
However, I began to hear noises when Gove took over at DEFRA that the Plan was
going to be a done deal, not a Green Paper, stitched up by NGOs and
organisations that Gove invited in. Unsurprisingly, Gove went to a meeting of
the Natural Capital Committee (NCC) last July where he set out his vision and
priorities, and sought the NCCs “rapid advice on how to deliver the best
possible Plan” (4). The NCC’s main role is to advise Government on the
development of the 25 Environment Year Plan and had previously made a number
of specific recommendations in its 4th Annual Report in January last year on
what the plan should have contained (3) It had some pretty stern strictures in
how the plan should be implemented and operated. Gove followed up his visit to
the NCC by writing a letter where he said he had been considering the
recommendations in the Committee’s annual report, and that he agreed with the
main conclusion that “as we leave the European Union, an overarching plan
is vital to secure the greatest dividend for our environment” (5). He
reiterated his call for the Committee’s advice on “what the Plan should aim
to achieve, focusing on those areas where improvements are most urgent and
where the benefits are greatest; how it should seek to do so; and the
necessary conditions for success” requesting that he receive this advice
by September.

Are you rewriting it?

Just before that advice would land on his desk,
Gove was quizzed on the work of DEFRA by the Environment, Food and Rural
Affairs Committee (6). He was asked “if the previous 25-year environment
plan gone up in flames if you are drawing up a completely new one? That is the
rumour that is circulating…. When will we get this plan and are you rewriting
it?”. Gove was equivocal, saying that he was waiting on the NCC to lay out
some principles (again!) that he was “augmenting it”, adding some
“additional material to it to reflect some of the new and emerging concerns
that have been expressed”, and when he was pressed on whether he was
rewriting the Plan, Gove said he was “fine tuning” it. The NCC advice
came in five parts: that it should have a vision, ambition and goals for the
next 25 years; that the type and scale of activities and investments in
natural capital assets to deliver the ambition should be laid out in the Plan;
that milestones are incorporated into the Plan; that the delivery of the Plan
is supported by appropriate governance, accountability and implementation
structures; and that public funding of agricultural subsidies should be
closely targeted to the delivery of public goods (7). I noted two of the
specific recommendations from the NCC, to Increase woodland by at least
250,000ha by 2040, and to develop and implement a national network of
conservation areas to provide bigger, better and more joined up habitats,
including more nature reserves.

Two aspects of the Plan had already been trailed
in the Northern national forest and the independent, statutory body (8,9).
Because this plan was a done deal when it came out - it was not a consultation
document - I was reluctant to launch in, to see what it contained, especially
when Imogen, a friend who can root out anything to do with heathland dogma,
found the example of the restoration of lowland heath from plantation forest
at Tidenham Chase, Gloucestershire, in the Annex of supplementary evidence. It was
given as being an indication of the benefits that come from restoration of
species and ecological communities (10):“The very existence of species and ecological communities is valued by many
people, especially those that are rare, threatened or otherwise iconic or
culturally significant. They also deliver a range of benefits directly and
indirectly because they underpin almost all other ecosystem services through
which benefits are derived from natural capital”

One of those benefits attributed to heathland in
the evidence is “contributions to public access”, which you would
disagree with if you have any perspective on the turmoil and anger felt in
local communities about heathland restoration destroying their often
publically-owned, uplifting space (11). Imogen could read no further, having
found this on heathland, but I was struck by the reference to ecosystem
services. So often, this rings warning bells about how wild nature is
perceived, and so I had to check the Plan itself. There were two references to
intrinsic value, the first in “Respecting nature’s intrinsic value” and
the second in “we should instead be recognising the intrinsic value of the
wildlife and plants that are our fellow inhabitants of this planet” (12).
However, the first reference loses its value when it is followed by “But we
also draw from the planet all the raw materials we need to live – food, water,
air and energy for growth. So protecting and enhancing the environment, as
this Plan lays out, is about more than respecting nature. It is critical if
the next generation is to flourish, with abundant natural resources to draw
on, that we look after our and their inheritance wisely” and the second
when it is followed by “our stewardship today can lead to a healthier and
culturally richer planet tomorrow”. My sensitivity warns that this lack of
definition or clear meaning of intrinsic value is a continuation of the
enforced coexistence of wild nature within a cultural landscape.

Ecosystem services and captive beaver

Gove has prior form in misunderstanding the
sentiments of free and unfettered living linked to intrinsic value, with those
of ecosystem services where wild nature is treated as the tool to provide
services that are primarily of benefit to us. Late last year, a fanfare was
made about Gove being enthusiastic about a scheme to release beaver in the
Forestry Commission’s Forest of Dean, a quote from Gove was taken by many to
imply that he was keen on more releases (13):“The project is an example of the wider approach we are taking to enhance
biodiversity, become the first generation to leave the environment in a better
state for future generations and deliver on our plans for a Green Brexit”

That this isn’t to be a release to free living
was absolutely evident from the fact that the beavers were to be “released
into a 6.5ha secure enclosure”, that the Forestry Commission would be
“designing a robust fence to keep the beaver enclosed” and that “a
management plan will be put in place to make sure the enclosure remains
secure” (13). Despite this, many less attentive people lauded this as some
triumph for the return of beaver, as they did also for the captive beaver in
Cornwall (14). Instead, the beaver release in the Forest of Dean will be used
as enfenced, slave labour, a tool to provide an ecosystem service by being able to “hold back
enough water to help with flood alleviation for Lydbrook” (13) in the same
way as the beaver in Cornwall are being used to provide flood mitigation for
the people in Ladock (14). Is this enhancing biodiversity? Is there any
difference in captive beaver and the captive cattle that are used as a
conservation grazing tool by the conservation industry? There was also a
concomitant announcement about a change of licensing that would require in
future that beaver to be released in to a captive enclosure would now likely
need to be licenced, which had previously - like the Cornwall beaver - not
been needed (15). There was a certain ambiguity about this change, but only
for the majority of us who hadn’t received a briefing note issued by Natural
England in the month before the announcement of the change(16).

The fact that “ecosystem services”
appears 50 times in the supplementary evidence to the Plan is pretty damning
when again there is no definition associated with the reference to intrinsic
value (10). In truth it is devalued again by its linking to the benefits for
humans (10): “Our species and ecological communities are intrinsically
valued for their conservation and also contribute to other benefits such as
clean air and water, food, timber and soil”. Consider that a recent paper
contrasted the environmental ethics of an anthropocentric conservation focus,
as exemplified by an ecosystem services approach, to biocentric and ecocentric
values that recognise the welfare of all nonhuman form in maintaining holistic
ecosystems (17). The authors concluded that anthropocentric motivations can
only make a positive contribution to the environment in situations where
humans are conscious of a direct benefit to themselves. However, they believe
this is a “rejection of intrinsic value of nature” that has dire
consequences for wild nature(17):“By rejecting intrinsic value, environmental protection is enacted only to
the extent needed for human well-being, and a human environmental right
subjugates all other needs, interests and values of nature to those of
humanity”

The big idea for nature in the Plan

The DEFRA blog about its impact in the media the
day after the launch was typically bullish on the Press coverage of the Plan
(18). However, a more measured Research briefing from the House of Commons
Library a few days afterwards gave a summary of stakeholder reaction, and was
honest in saying that the “Overall reaction to the Plan has been mixed”
(19). I’m just not up to delving through and commenting on the minutiae of the
Plan, especially after coming across the ubiquitous and habitual reference to
Knepp where Charlie Burrell has “allowed free-roaming animals to shape the
land into a mixture of habitats from grassland and scrub to open-grown trees
and wood pasture” (12). Well the half-truths in that need unravelling, but
that is for another day. The two recommendations from the NCC that I noted
above are reflected in the Plan: the aspiration for increasing woodland in
England is though lower at planting only 180,000 hectares by end of 2042,
whereas the national network of conservation areas was in the Plan under the
label of a Nature Recovery Network (12). The target for this Network “will
provide an additional 500,000 hectares of wildlife habitat building on other
plans for landscape-scale recovery for peatland, woodlands and natural flood
management”. This would be through creation or restoration of
“wildlife-rich habitat outside the protected site network, focusing on priority
habitats as part of a wider set of land management changes providing extensive
benefits”

The latter are described elsewhere as a
“range of other outcomes such as carbon capture and natural flood management”
both symptomatic of the need to overcome human over-consumption and
degradation of wild nature, so that it is pretty much the case in this Plan that
"environmental protection is enacted only to the extent needed for human
well-being" (see above). There is an admission in a footnote that there are
no detailed targets for this action, but that there will be development of
“more detailed targets as part of our post 2020 strategy for nature. We will
focus restoration and creation on protected or priority habitats (habitats of
principal importance under the Natural Environment and Rural Communities Act)”
(see Footnote 5 on page 26 (12)). Apart from the footnote confusingly now
adding in protected areas, this shows how the Plan has, even without it being
a consultation document, closed down any debate about what form the outcome of
that recovery could take by fixing the Network to the habitats of principal
importance under the NERC Act 2006 (12). You won’t find these habitats of
principal importance in the legislation - it just notes that they will be
drawn up in consultation with Natural England, and not with you (20). In any
event, the 56 habitats that are listed by Natural England (21) were all taken
from the UK Biodiversity Action Plan (UKBAP) and
which was pretty much the wish list of the conservation industry, and again
not you (22).

So, this is the big idea for nature in the Plan?
You will find this statement - “A new Nature Recovery Network will require
input from a range of stakeholders” (12). Why stakeholders – why not
citizens? Don’t we get a say about our wild heritage? As you know, it will be
the usual “stakeholders” – those that got to have a privileged say on
the Plan, but also in all other issues of nature conservation over many years,
including the UKBAP, and who will bring their slavish self-interested
mainstream conservation dogma with them to its delivery. How do we brake this
VICIOUS cycle, how do we get citizen engagement with the determination
of environmental priorities, as there was in France with its Grenelle
Environment Forum (23) and in its implementation of ecological networks
through the Green and Blue Grid (24)? I wish more people would take the
initiative in setting up their own citizen’s panels, pre-empting the bogus
processes of consultation, because this issue of consultation is just an
oozing sore.

The nature conservation value of scrub

My local authority initiated a Biodiversity
Scrutiny Review that had a call for information, but I only heard about it
after the event (25). It seems the usual suspects had been contacted, as
listed in the Terms of Reference for the Review. These were mostly the type of
people who fail to recognise that they are just unthinking adherents to a
slavish dogma of a conservation industry. It is the saviour complex.
When told by Natural England that heath, ground nesting birds like skylark and
curlew, and historical artefacts on my local, publicly-owned moor are
conservation priorities, then they will get the warm glow of having done
their bit in supporting the Higher Level Stewardship (HLS) agreement with
Natural England, and not had to be bothered with the detail. So now, one of
these usual suspects is saying that they don’t want the trees that have spread
on the moor, and it may be that NE will be demanding their removal under the
HLS, backed by the birdists who say that this open moorland is important for
visiting, migrating and nesting birds, many species of which they allege are
under threat. This is the broken record of the birdists, that anything other
than a landscape totally denuded of shrubs and trees is safe for these birds,
as that structural vegetation will harbour predators (26).

Other realities exist, as I belatedly responded
to the call for information, that changes in vegetation on the moor since
grazing ceased after Foot and Mouth Disease in 2003 have given rise to a
different diversity, and which is exceptionally more abundant - not just in
species diversity but in total numbers – there are far more living things
(27). These will be dismissed by Natural England as being common species and,
yes, they are common in having a more abundant presence than the conservation
priorities. The grouse shooters complained after the recent decision not to
renew the shooting lease on Ilkley Moor (28) another of our publicly-owned
moors, that the 62 curlews there were a success of management for grouse
shooting – predator control and heath management - but that is 0.08 curlews
per hectare, or 12.5 hectares per curlew (29). So much degraded land for one
bird species. I have never seen a curlew on my moor. I noted, however, that I
was certain that the moor was benefitting by the known nature conservation
value of the developing scrub and trees. The Joint Nature Conservation
Committee has a report on that value (30) and I explained that I had witnessed
the phenomenon described in the report of natural tree seed dispersal by birds
and factors such as proximity to seed sources, availability of perches and
quality of the receptor site for dispersers, played out on the moor. I tied
this burgeoning structural diversity to an increasing microclimate,
microhabitat structure that would suit the phytophagous insects that feed on
woody plants, noting that willows, which are spreading on the moor, have at
752 the most insect species associated with them. While I had no figures for
the moor, I suggested that, like South House Moor and Carrifran, upland areas
where grazing had ceased and where trees are regenerating, over 50 bird
species are likely to migrate in to my local moor as its vegetational changes
continued, including the increasing height of the now ungrazed dwarf shrubs
and moorland grasses (31). The latter will have been accompanied by an influx
of small mammals. All this will massively expand the size of the trophic
pyramid that could be on the moor, as well as increasing the interaction
between the trophic levels - it will be good hunting for the kestrels that
I see hovering over the moor (31). It will have abundant but different wild
life.

I allowed that the threat to skylarks on the
moor was the only real threat that had any credibility, but that there was a
deeper time element to it. Skylarks have gradually moved up the hill after
grazing ceased. This was nothing to do with trees, but that the acid grasses
on the lower slopes grow higher there in the absence of grazing because of the
greater moisture. This had left the summit of the hill with its much lower
moisture continuing to have shorter acid grassland. I didn’t see the moisture
content on the top of the hill changing any time soon, it also being the most
resistant area to natural tree establishment. If trees did eventually
establish, it would be through their leaf drop that would eventually increase
moisture capacity, but then the skylarks wouldn’t like the trees anyway.

So – was my local moor just to be about a few
skylarks versus a massive abundance of other wild nature? I would rather sell
both moors. The public would still have access (if we would want it!) because
they are registered urban commons. However, their sale would remove the
endless frustration and anger I feel that public ownership means nothing in
terms of the public will for what should happen on the moors. The new owners
can trash them up all they want, because what they will do will fit within the
regime. It’s the layers of that regime that cut across the
determination that should come from public ownership: firstly, the rights of
the commoners (but with no responsibility); the SSSI designation on Ilkley;
the HLS on both; and finally the duties under the NERC Act 2000 on local
authorities. If the shooters are so concerned about the "biodiversity"
of Ilkley Moor, then let them buy the moor and pay for its "management"!
I doubt there will be any potential buyers as the reason often that commons
came into public ownership in the early 20th century is that they are such poor
farming land for a private farmer when their usage is already going to other
people who don't even pay any rent.

Disdain for real National Parks

My life has become a single ongoing revelation
that I haven’t been cynical enough about the stupidity of those with the
saviour complex, but the more I thought about the frustration I had at the
stitch up of the 25 year Environmental Plan for England and its underwhelming
content, and at the situation with my local moor, the more I got angry about
what I had found out about the denial of real National Parks in Britain, areas
where wild nature could be free to live in its own space. I wrote last time
that the Addison Committee, the first Parliamentary Committee on National
Parks in Britain in the early 1930s, had repudiated evidence on National Parks
from N. America and continental Europe that gave free, unfettered space to
wild nature, indicating that it wasn’t needed because our “fauna is
practically limited to birds, insects and the smaller mammals”(31). This flatly condemned us to a continuing incomplete trophic
ecology because of the resistance to an opportunity to reinstate large areas
of our native vegetation, along with reinstatement of our large carnivores, in
the face of a predominantly cultural landscape. There is more to be disdainful
about the Report from this Committee in the seeming prejudice that it regarded
National Parks, preferring instead to use the phrase “National Reserve”
when the witness evidence had used National Park (32). The Committee scoffed
at National Parks in N. America like Jasper and Yellowstone, implying that
they were on an “heroic scale” a term usually applied to epic scenery,
and which it thought did not apply to Britain. However, the Lake District was
one of the tentative locations given in the Report, put forward by The Lake
District National Reserve Committee and the Fell and Rock Climbing Club that
had “24 reasons in support of their claims that the whole of the Lake
District should be as a National Park” one of those being the “physical
and geological conformation of the District”. I think most people would
regard the latter as having an “heroic scale”

I am very angry that the Committee pretty much
ignored the exceptional evidence they had about existing National Parks in
Europe, and which they had referenced in Appendix 4 to the Report. This was
mostly from a journal article by American botanist Harvey Hall, who had been
tasked by the Carnegie Institution to spend a year in Europe in order to
investigate European approaches to National Parks and nature reserves. Halls
article had been an important source for when I wrote about the Swiss National
Park in a review of the ecological values of wilderness in Europe (33). Hall
visited that Park in the company of Swiss phyto-geographer Carl Schröter in
1928 (34). It was Schröter who had noted the botanical value of the proposed
park area and its likelihood in providing good conditions for scientific study
of a natural community with numerous rare plants (35). The Park had been
enacted in 1913 by a Federal Decree that stated “a Swiss National Park is
being established, in which the entire flora and fauna is left entirely to
their free natural development and protected from any human influence not in
the purpose of the National Park. The whole reserve is subject to scientific
observation” (35). Writing a few years later in 1920, Schröter, who had
originally been tasked with laying out a strategy for the long term research
in Park, wrote in his history of the Park as a total reservation and of the
organization of its scientific investigation (36):“For the science, the National Park is an invaluable field of observation,
unique in its kind by the absolute elimination of disturbances of natural
balance by humans. All previous changes in the original state through the
centuries-long influence of the hunters, fishermen, foresters, farmers,
shepherds and haymen, by fertilizer, ground breaking, mowing and pasture will
disappear again in time and the old original community will be restored. A
great “wilderness experiment” will be carried out there. It is a major task of
scientific observation, which of course has to extend to a very long period of
time, to trace all stages of this wilderness, this return to its original
state, to this "retrograde succession" (in this case retrograde
succession means the replacement of the existing vegetational community with
the original, as in restoration)

Unlike America, Hall observed that Europe “no
longer [had] any extensive natural areas to protect. They must first re-create
natural conditions through long periods of protection, sometimes accompanied
by replanting and by reintroduction of the indigenous fauna”(34). He noted that hunting, fishing, tree felling, agriculture,
haying, and grazing were prohibited in the Swiss National Park, and determined
to take back the lessons of "complete reserves"
for the National Parks and National Forests of America. The complete reserve
of the Swiss National Park was noted but not defined in Appendix 4 of the
Report, but then there was a complete misunderstanding of the point of
contrast in approach described by Hall for two National Parks in Italy. For
Gran Paradiso National Park, Hall observed that the “herbage is too closely
cropped and the flora is modified by the presence of weedy species
characteristic of overgrazed areas in this region” He concluded that
“Grazing is the worst enemy of the park at present. It is permitted over about
90 per cent of the area, the excluded portion consisting chiefly of high peak”.
In contrast, the upper zone of 250sqkm of Abruzzi National Park is a
“complete reserve where hunting, agriculture, and similar activities are
prohibited, but it is open to the public” it is “protected from
modification by man “in order that the natural state may be preserved or
returned to." This is to permit students and amateurs to evaluate and enjoy the
results of a natural development, of a return to primitive condition”

This detail on the Italian National Parks from
Hall is not in Appendix 4, nor was there any
explanation of what defined the “complete reserve” in the Swiss
National Park, nor was the example of either of these countries given in the
body of the Report (32). In fact Sweden was the only country covered by Hall
that was both in Appendix 4 and in the main body of the Report, but the
strictures on activity in these National Parks described in the Appendix did
not appear in the Report:“In Sweden an Ordinance passed by the Riksdag in 1909 secured for the
Nation 10 National Parks of which the largest extends to 700 miles. The
Ordinance makes it unlawful to interfere with the soil, or with the flora and
fauna, or to put up buildings”

It is as if the Committee were deliberately
sidestepping any consideration on restriction of human exploitative activity
in any putative parks in Britain, without even recognising that our diminished
fauna that the Committee described as “practically limited to birds,
insects and the smaller mammals”(see above) was
still at threat then, as it is today (see later). At least one of the
witnesses had alluded to that in its evidence. The Council for the
Preservation of Rural Wales was concerned about the fate of its fauna, noting
that the pine marten and polecat still survived in the Snowdon region, and
that ravens and peregrine falcons bred on inland, as well as on seashore,
cliffs. In what must seem a painful irony, now that pine martens are having to
be translocated to Wales (37) that its recommendation had no impact on the
Committee:“If the animal life of Snowdonia is to be preserved, certain sanctuaries of
fair size for birds and mammals must be created, some of which must, be closed
to the public all the year round, whilst others should be closed for regular
or occasional periods. The introduction of exotic animals should be strictly
discouraged”

The influences on the Addison Committee

Based on the witness evidence, it was those same
organisations that today have an overweening and self-interested influence on
nature conservation policy, which were the major influence on the Committee.
It was their evidence that was parroted in the Report. Thus the National
Trust made the usual excuse of “Our island is too small and too thickly
populated” and here is where it closed the door on real National Parks in
what was a very patronising way (33):“Preservation is the primary need: access, however important, only comes
second….. Preservation is consistent with private occupation……For us it cannot
mean a vast area in which cultivation has never begun and is never to be
allowed, where all is to be wild nature open for the enjoyment and instruction
of the people”

The other came from the Correlating Committee
for the Protection of Nature, set up in 1924 as an umbrella organisation to
encourage co-operation and liaison in preserving all forms of wildlife (38).
Among its 10 constituent societies was the Royal Society for the Protection
of Birds and the Society for the Promotion of Nature Reserves, the latter
being the forerunner to the Wildlife Trusts (39). It also played the
population card by saying that National Parks in other parts of the world
“obviously cannot be provided in a small and densely populated country”
(33). Then it asserted that areas where “the public have free access”
would be incompatible with an aim to “preserve, unaltered as far as
possible, the animals and plants of the district” that it’s “utility
for the preservation of fauna and flora is limited” and that “these
conditions would be unfavourable to the increase of shy animals and possibly
certain plants”. More self-interested patronisation of the public that
completely ignored the threat that continuing agriculture would pose to those
“shy mammals”.

I should be surprised that other commentators on
the Addison Report did not get the significance of this shutting down of the
potential for wild nature to live unfettered in its own space in a real
National Park, because just like the often cited paper by Mair and Delafons,
they have all approached it on the basis of it being the first “important
stepping stone” to the eventual passage of the National Parks and
Countryside Act in 1949 (40). As with Mair and Delafons, the admission of a
diminished ecology in the Report, and the consequence of disdaining real
National Parks for any reversal of that, was not picked up by any of the
others, including Bill Adams, the doyen of nature conservation history (eg.
41-43). At least David Evans, while he also missed the ecological consequences
of the Addison Report, recognised the inevitability of the wicked issue of the
outcome of the 1949 Act that nature conservation was tied to agriculture (44):“In effect, the vast majority of land in these areas was in the safe hands
of agriculture and forestry and was expected to remain there for the
foreseeable future. The possibility that such land uses could conflict with
nature conservation was never entertained”

There is more to be said about the Addison
Report and its collusion with the status quo that kept our landscapes
degraded. Many other Reports on National Parks were to follow, but the London
Conference on African Wildlife, which marked the first international agreement
on protected areas as the primary means for achieving wildlife preservation,
came two years after the Addison Report, and should have been cause for a
rethink on the dead hand approach that the Addison
Report had set in motion. In short, the London Convention was an agreement
that wildlife preservation could best be achieved by the “constitution of
national parks, strict natural reserves” (45). The
latter are defined in Article 2: a national park is publicly controlled
and set aside for the propagation, protection and preservation of wild animal
life and wild vegetation, and in which the hunting, killing or capturing of
fauna and the destruction or collection of flora is prohibited; a strict
natural reserve is publicly controlled, and where any form of hunting or
fishing, forestry, agriculture, mining, excavations or prospecting, drilling,
levelling of the ground, or construction, any work involving the alteration of
the configuration of the soil or the character of the vegetation, any act
likely to harm or disturb the fauna and flora and the introduction of any
species of fauna and flora, whether indigenous or imported, wild or
domesticated, was strictly forbidden. While these protected areas were to be
set up by the Contracting Government’s that had territories in the continent
of Africa, the definition of the "strict natural reserve" went on to
have ramifications for the American continent when the definition of a
“strict wilderness area” in the Western Hemisphere Convention of 1940 owed
much to it, the latter then probably feeding into the drafting of the U.S.
Wilderness Act in 1964, the first ever Act of its kind (46,47).

The ever-downward spiral of destruction from using
predator control in nature conservation

We continue to diminish our bird and small
mammal population from the continual holding of landscapes in a degraded
state. Thus the damage to habitat on Ilkley Moor (see above) arising from its
use for grouse shooting has been the main driver behind a “wildlife crash”
when over half of the protected breeding bird species there have declined or
become locally extinct, in particular with the negative impact on merlin,
dunlin and short eared owl (48). However, it is more than just land
management, as it also comes from the determined slaughter of so-called pest
species in the cause of a few favoured birds. There is a dreadful catalogue of
this in a report from 2016 on Understanding Predation, commissioned by
Scotland’s Moorland Forum (49). It is a litany of justifications of predator
control in Scotland in the cause of six ground-nesting birds, with detailed
profiles and management actions for their common predators and others, all
illustrated by little twee icons. This is about the slaughter of foxes,
corvids (crows, hooded crows, magpies) mustelids (stoats, weasels, ferrets)
and gulls, the illegal control of raptors (buzzards, eagles, harriers,
sparrowhawk) and mammals in the pine marten, polecat and badger – “Unless
explicitly stated, consideration of predator removal in this report focuses
exclusively on (lethal) predator control. This involves removing predators by
killing them, and is one of the commonest forms of predator management
practiced and studied” (report link is on (49)). I would add to that the
slaughter of mountain hares in Scotland, our only native mountain herbivorous
mammal, the reason given by the slaughterers being “If unmanaged there can
be problems with grazing pressure with resulting impact on upland flora”
(50). So why not remove sheep instead, or don’t remove the predators that
would control the numbers of hares? It is really about gamekeepers managing
land for red grouse shooting because they fear the mountain hare will spread
disease, reducing the amount of grouse they can shoot (51).

I wrote some years ago about the ever-downward
spiral of destruction of wild nature from using predator control in nature
conservation when reviewing a book on ecological restoration - “There is
also exposure of the hard choice often inherent when it comes to utilizing
predator control in achieving successful restoration - that predator control
perhaps having no endpoint. Predator control has too many bad associations for
me with the sport shooting estates of upland Britain where conservation of
priority upland bird species is linked to the profitability from shooting
gamebird species through control of native predators”(52). Take out the
top predators, as we did with the wolf, lynx and bear, plus the larger birds
of prey, and you end up losing the natural restraint on middle predators, like
the fox, pine martin, badger, stoat, polecat, and the smaller birds of prey.
The latter then become the target of predator control from the likes
especially in Britain of game keeping, but also by the conservation industry
(in particular the RSPB) and so by chopping away at the trophic levels, we go
down and down the spiral of landscapes empty of fauna, except a few birds and
lots of livestock, the latter maintaining the degradation of natural
vegetation – we destroy the structure of our natural trophic pyramid.

Just think, though, if the Addison Committee had
learnt from the wisdom of Hall, and from his examples of National Parks in
Europe, and that we had secured at least one, large publicly-controlled area
some 80 years ago where we “first re-create natural conditions through long
periods of protection, sometimes accompanied by replanting and by
reintroduction of the indigenous fauna” (see above). If only we had
determined to watch the “results of a natural development, of a return to
primitive condition” and to “trace all stages of this wilderness, this
return to its original state”. We would by now have a large area where the
natural vegetation would have restored, and where we would have rebuilt the
native trophic pyramid by translocating in the full complement of small and
middle mammals to their former native range, as well as by now reinstating at
least two of the three of our extirpated large carnivores.